I worked for a nonprofit out of college, doing social media & marketing. I always knew I wanted to start my own thing, and I knew that I had a network of creatives that were interested in working with me. Who wants to be stuck with a paycheck, anyway? Those things don’t increase much on their own.

Which work or brand are you best known for?

We’ve started doing a lot of film work for international nonprofits. I just got back from Costa Rica doing some branding & photography for an NGO. In October I was in Liberia covering the ebola outbreak for a medical organization.

Who is your most interesting staff member?

Kalvin. He’s a great editor & second shooter but all he talks about is his “time spent in England and Iceland”. I’m tired of it already.

What is your biggest challenge at the moment?

We’re new; just over three years into it. Our biggest challenge at the moment is getting through the growing pains of a baby startup and finding momentum in a huge market.

What do you make of the trend where brands are skipping their agency of record to work directly with production partners?

I think we’re entering a phase where agencies are losing traction with smaller brands simply from an economic perspective. A boutique production shop can offer the same value for much less dollar. We’re trying to take a zen minimal approach and provide the absolute best value for everyone involved.

What does the future look like for Canticle?

I’m teaming up with a filmmaker from Northwest Arkansas for a two-month overland trip from the United States to Argentina. We’re planning the production of the documentary and I expect it’ll be one of the most exciting pies I’ve dug my fingers into. Besides that: just digging in and doing work!

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The partner spotlight is a weekly series where we go behind the scenes with some of the companies that make VendorDB great. Next up is The UX Department!

The Vitals

Name : The UX Department
Locations: HQ in San Francisco and we have an office in Argentina
Year Founded: 2010
Specialties: User Experience Design, User Interface Design, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Front-end Development.

What inspired you to start your company?

I wanted to build a team that could provide a rich User Experience for our product’s users and not just a nice looking design. I wanted to enter the web design business from a user-centered approach.

What was the first job someone hired you for?

Our very first client as an agency was QuestionPro, the leading provider of online survey software, that trusted us back then and keeps working with us now. We worked with them to create their platforms and make online research an easy interactive experience for their users. We built a long lasting business relationship with this company.

What was the most technically challenging work you’ve created?

I would say our two most challenging projects were La Gaceta (online platform for an Argentinean newspaper) because of the amount and complexity of the templates we had to create, and AutoGrid, because we had to do a lot of research to understand how the electrical industry works and how it’s billed, in order to create complex interfaces with that data.

What is the smartest work you’ve seen in the past year that didn’t come from your shop?

I think the biggest change in the industry has been the acknowledgement and general acceptance of User Experience as a needed discipline to make web products better. I see that now there’s a major awareness of users needs and wants, and that, of course is a great improvement.

What is the best thing about working at The UX Department?

What we like about our team is that we learn from each other. We believe in being part of each other’s training process and helping every member grow as a professional. It’s everybody’s responsibility to make a great team.

Our Creative Director was working with our investor on a passion project as a freelance shooter and editor, and our investor saw that his skills for creating cohesive and beautiful online video were in demand. Together, they decided to set up shop and bring on a staff that would focus on online video. Soon, Original Six Media was off and running, working on large-scale event video, product demonstrations, non-profit video and even big-budget broadcast commercials to meet the needs of a growing list of clients and creative partners. We couldn’t have possibly imagined how this would all play out, but we’ve enjoyed the journey.

Why Chicago?

Chicago is one of the best incubators for talent in the creative industries and honestly, it’s where most of us come from. We couldn’t possibly imagine having a home-base anywhere else—we love the vibrancy of the city and our clients. But we also do a ton of travel. We have a lean crew and connections across the country, so are comfortable filming on location anywhere.

Which work or brand are you best known for?

We have worked with USA Hockey on a few great projects. We did their viral video “From Child’s View, Parents Find Full-Ice Hockey No Fun”, a video about why playing surfaces need to be downsized for small children so that they can efficiently learn the skills of hockey. It was an educational video with a fun concept, and it really resonated with the USA Hockey audience – becoming their most viewed video of all time. The video helped continue a conversation in the community about a controversial topic —people kept sharing the video, and the views are still coming in by the thousands every month.

Which project is your most underrated?

We had the awesome opportunity to film the All Blacks vs. USA Eagles rugby tournament at Soldier Field as a behind the scenes crew. We did a suite of videos that had original music, amazing footage from the field, and interesting interviews with the players; the videos remain internal to the company that hired us, and although we won multiple creative awards for one of the videos in particular, we haven’t yet been able to display the content publicly.

What is the smartest work you’ve seen in the past year that didn’t come from your shop?

We have amazing contacts and friends at really good, mid-sized companies in the Midwest that are struggling to get video production budgets for their marketing efforts. It can be frustrating when you genuinely want to help them be more recognizable and have custom, slick video for their websites. There are a lot of ‘old school’ marketing techniques in mid-sized corporations that don’t include social media or video that can be hard to overcome, especially when you know you could be creating such great content for them.

What do you make of the trend where brands are skipping their agency of record to work directly with production partners?

This is a mixed bag for us. We LOVE working with agencies because they help us be a part of an overall campaign, and a multi-tiered marketing effort, often with media dollars behind it, that helps get our video in front of a broad audience. That being said, we think that there are a lot of efficiencies to be found by working project-by-project with production companies like us, and it can be a great solution for clients who just don’t have the budgets to work with an AOR. Ultimately, we can work either way to create effective branded video content.

What is the best thing about working at Original Six Media?

We’re a small, collaborative team of distinctly different creatives. All of our different strengths are emphasized by the fact that we’ve all had dramatically different origin stories. We thrive on having differing views, different styles of fashion, different music and media tastes, and everything in between. Our varied backgrounds encourage lively debates, long conversations, and ultimately the ability to create videos that each has a unique voice that is informed by multiple perspectives.

Where is the best bar in the River North neighborhood in Chicago?

Our offices are directly above Headquarters Beercade, a bar that is also an arcade. The beer is always craft and the games are always free. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time there.

Care to share a joke?

We called Rick Astley the other day and asked if we could borrow some of his Pixar movies. He said we could borrow Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3, and Ratatouille, but “I’m never gonna give you Up.”

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Spring has finally arrived here in New York City and with it we’re pleased to announce a bunch of improvements we’ve been making over the winter months.

Worked With

Now, by popular demand, you can endorse someone with just a single click!

The latest endorsements feature prominently on the homepage…

…and all Worked With endorsements appear on the right side of every profile page, offering a convenient snapshot of everyone who has loved working with that company / freelancer (yup, you read that right… more on freelancers later this summer).

Profile Enhancements

We’ve also received a bit of feedback requesting additional data fields for profiles.

The first improvement we’ve made is the addition of Honors & Awards. Use this to list every recognition for your work (and we know some of you have been recognized A LOT).

We’ve also added support for more social pages including Tumblr, IMDB and Behance.

Look for further improvements to profile pages in the next couple months.

Metrics

Building on top of the profile metrics feature we launched back in December, we’ve now added profile interactions to the available metrics for all profiles.

Profile interactions allow you to see how many times users have clicked any of the links (website, email, social, etc.) on your profile.

Our mission is to connect people with the best service providers in the world. With the addition of interaction metrics, you can now better connect your VendorDB profile visits to that last RFP.